Can't End Like This
by raven1066
Summary: My take on the FINAL battle between Oliver/Arrow & Slade/Deathstroke. Wrote pre 2x18 but decided to make no changes based on the episode. My 1st "published" work, I had a good friend from twitter get it into proper shape but any mistakes are my own. Reviews are welcome. Story could be AU by the time we get to 2x19. Wrote it as a one-shot, could be a more if demand is high. Enjoy!
1. Chapter 1

'It can't end like this…not like this!' The thought echoed inside Oliver Queen's mind as he started to crawl on his belly towards her. The ground was covered by debris from the fight. Oliver's latest unsuccessful battle against the man that had once been his best friend, a man he had thought of as a brother. Pain lanced though his entire body but his gaze was fixed on his goal, he had to reach her.

"Look at you! This is what you've been reduced to…what I'VE reduced to you! Crawling on the floor like a WORM!" His adversary's accent was all too familiar to Oliver's ears. "Where do you think you're going, huh? You think you can somehow save her if you can get close enough, is that it?" He jeered. "You took your best shot and YOU FAILED!"

With this Slade Wilson, garbed in this black Deathstroke gear, reached down with his right hand and picked up the flat grey finished Desert Eagle handgun from off the floor leading to what had been Felicity Smoak's desk at Queen Consolidated. Slade ejected the magazine and inspected the rounds. "I would have never thought you had it in you, .50 cal depleted uranium hollow point tipped rounds, must have cost a fortune to make. If you'd hit me in the head, as you intended, I would probably be dead right now. Not even I could have survived that. Lucky for me I improved my gear after our last fight on the island." Slade sneered as he slammed the mag back into the pistol.

Oliver's plan had almost worked, Slade was disgusted with himself. If he had been a fraction slower, or if he hadn't spent the money on his upgrades he'd be dead. He looked at his discarded, now ruined, bifurcated black and orange mask on the floor and realized that it more than anything else had saved his life. Without it Oliver would have beaten him, again. He had underestimated Oliver once more and it almost cost him. But as disgusted as he was with himself it was nothing to what he felt towards Oliver. The idea that some people of this city had considered this maggot on the floor a hero filled him with contempt. And the idea that Oliver was still crawling, still trying to reach her was both pathetic and laughable. But Slade was getting annoyed at his persistence.

Oliver realized he was beaten. He could feel, more that see, Slade moving around him. There were so many ways "Deathstroke" could end it. More ways than Oliver could count in his pain hazed mind. He had no rational hope for victory but he had to reach her. She had to know that he hadn't given up. That with his last breath, with his last heartbeat he had been going towards her. That she was his final thought.

Felicity Smoak couldn't believe what her eyes were seeing, didn't want to believe what her eyes were seeing. Oliver in his Arrow gear, beaten half to death by a maniac, squirming his way towards her. She could tell that he kept trying to look her in the eyes but he couldn't quite get his head high enough to do it. Tears kept streaming down her face as she continued to try and call out to him but her gag prevented anything intelligible from coming out. Wilson had tied her wrists together with zip cuffs and secured them off to her left with a spike. Her arms were level to her head and she felt sure that she could free them from the wall if she just pulled hard enough. Oliver had to know that she hadn't given up, that her last thought had been of trying to reach him.

Slade had had enough. He wanted the REAL fun to begin. "Oh no my old friend, you don't get to reach your true love. That's not part of the plan." Hate and joy filled what was left of his soul. With that he looked around to the green walls of what had been the entry to Oliver's office. 'Yes' he thought, 'that will do nicely.' Slade crushed the Eagle in his gloved fist and let the ruined weapon fall to the floor. Then he began to slam his right fist into the concrete wall. The loud crashes and debris radiated out from the impacts. Any normal man would have just shattered his hand, but Slade hadn't been ordinary since he had been injected with the WWII Japanese super solider serum over 5 years ago.

Oliver had no idea why Slade was putting fist sized holes into the wall and he didn't care. It gave him more time. Time to reach Felicity. Finally Slade grunted in success and he ripped out from the wall of piece of steel rebar. Felicity was shocked that he could perform such a feat. He was a superman. What would it take to kill something like him. She prayed that something could stop him and save Oliver. But she knew it was hopeless.

Slade turned back towards Oliver. He was impressed, the Kid had managed to move almost a whole 6 inches towards the blonde. Slade looked at his prize from the wall. It didn't look quite right for what he had in mind and he knocked off the remaining bits of concrete. Once finished he walked up to him, picked his spot and drove the steel rebar into Oliver's right lung, pining him to the floor. 'Like the bug that he is' thought Slade.

Felicity's heart lurched when she heard Oliver scream in agony. The sound filled her ears and killed part of her soul. This was it. This was the end. She saw Slade begin to move towards her. She knew what was coming. She was finally grateful for the gag, this way Oliver wouldn't be able to hear her scream. But she would be strong for as long as she could. She lifted her gaze from the love of her life, pinned to the floor by a steel rod nearly 3 feet long and focused her gaze on the man walking towards her. She wasn't stupid. She was going to die, horribly, but she would accept her end. She wouldn't tremble with fear. She would look the homicidal manic in his eye and show him that he hadn't conquered her spirit.

"I have to say one thing for you Kid, you certainly have a type. What's with you and blondes anyway?" His mouth formed a smirk, "I have to admit", he pointed to Felicity secured to the wall, "she surprised me. When I came to town I thought certain you would have hooked up with your long lost love Laurel." The mocking tone of his voice made it clear about how he felt. "Then when Sara came back and you and her started banging like bunnies I thought, see, this is just like him, can never decide. But then I saw the way you looked at this one and I knew, I just knew." Slade voice took on a softer quality. "When you didn't think she noticed, you looked at Shado like that."

Slade was now within arms reach of Felicity. She clenched her jaw and glared at him with all the hate and defiance she could muster. She saw out of her peripheral vision that he pulled a long knife, more like a machete, from a scabbard from his left hip. He was about to begin. "I know you think I'm the bad guy here Ms. Smoak but you just don't understand, I'm doing you a kindness. Oliver is scum. He would have betrayed you eventually. Just as he has everyone else in his life. Especially the women, isn't that right Kid!?" Slade jerked his head back towards Oliver as if to get his attention.

It had been the first time since the fight that he had addressed her and Felicity felt nothing but contempt for this little "man". He was trying to break her. Make her doubt Oliver. She would have sooner doubted herself. Oliver was far from perfect but he was great man and nothing this piece of filth could ever say would change how she felt about him.

Oliver was barely alive now. He had felt his right lung collapse when it had been pierced by the steel rod. He was beaten, bleeding and now he couldn't get enough oxygen. Each breath was a struggle. He wouldn't last much longer. But Slade had made a mistake, perhaps his last if Oliver could just take advantage of it. He remembered his teachings, from both Slade and Shado on the island.

Pain, they had told him, was just an electrical impulse to the brain. And thus, like anything else it could be managed, controlled. Just as he had been taught, he focused past the pain, past the hurts from his body. 'The will controls the body' said the real Slade's voice in Oliver's mind. He just had to focus past the pain and focus on the goal, the now and he could still save her. With what little strength remained in his body Oliver clenched his jaw and focused on his goal, his now: Felicity, more than he had anything in his entire life and then he put his hands down near his chest and pushed up. More pain than he had ever experienced flooded through his body. He almost passed out, almost cried out in pain but slowly he continued. Even has he felt the rebar tear his flesh he kept going.

Felicity saw what Oliver was up to and some small part of her heart leaped. She couldn't even begin to understand how Oliver was doing what he was doing. She didn't understand what he hoped to accomplish but she believed in him. To the end.

Finally Oliver did it, he pushed himself free of the steel rod that had pinned him to the floor but it would all be for nothing if he couldn't reach the syringe. He castigated himself. He should have used it sooner, he had felt sure that if his first plan had failed he still would have been able to inject himself but everything had gone bad so fast he hadn't had time. But Slade turning his back and gloating had given him the precious minutes he needed. The pain of being pinned to the floor had bought enough clarity that he had seen the syringe off to the right. He hadn't even realized that Slade hadn't found it. With his body racked with agony Oliver made his way to his last desperate hope. He had to be both quick and quiet, if Slade realized what was going on Felicity was dead and he could not let that happen.

When he reached the object he almost couldn't believe it, it was intact. When Oliver had first recognized that mirakuru had made it's way to Starling City he knew he had to plan for worst case scenarios and unlike his time on the island he had a multibillion dollar corporation to work on final, fallback solutions. When he had approached Henry Fyff in Applied Sciences with Roy's blood sample he had asked for two options: the best case would be a cure, some way to reverse the effects of the mirakuru serum, the worst case was an improved version. One that would be limited in some aspects but more potent in others. Fyff had failed at the first but Oliver held in his hand the results of the second. Praying to a God he no longer was sure he believed in, praying that it would work, Oliver stabbed himself in the heart and activated the syringe.

Felicity wasn't sure what Oliver was doing. He seemed to be making his way towards something. Some object on the ground. She couldn't make out what it was and she couldn't focus her eyes toward it, she couldn't give away to Slade what Oliver was doing.

"I'm going to kill her slow Kid. Won't take off the gag first. Don't want her trying to profess her love or some crap like that. But later, when she's lost to the pain, when she'll say anything for it to stop, then I'll take it off. So you can hear her scream!" Slade shook with both rage and pleasure. He was finally going to get what he wanted. The scream that Slade heard was beyond anything he had ever heard in his life. For a brief moment he was shocked. The gag was still in place in the girl's mouth and Oliver had never screamed like that, even after all the things Slade had done to him. It was those few brief seconds of indecision that were key.

Oliver had thought he had known pain before, he had been wrong. Compared to Henry's improved mirakuru serum what he had felt before was nothing. A match compared to an inferno. Oliver could literally feel his body change, altering and remaking itself. But unlike the effects of the older version Oliver's mind was still his own or as much as it could be engulfed in agony. 'A small price to pay' he though, although not in so many words, 'a small price to pay.'

The noise of Oliver's scream threatened to rip Felicity's hold on reality. She realized now what he had done. He had injected himself with mirakuru. She didn't know how he had gotten it but somehow he must have brought it with him. And she knew with a finality to the core of her being that Oliver had sacrificed his humanity to save her.

Oliver snapped around to face the man that had taken his friend's place. His vision seemed tinted in red. Both rage and hope filled his heart. He wouldn't fail. He would save her. He would end the threat to her forever. Slade turned to face his reborn enemy, who yelled with rage now, not pain. 'The Kid must have actually improved the serum' he thought incredulously. It wasn't supposed to be like this. He'd found the keystone, the blonde. He would kill her in front of Oliver and thus destroy him. That was the plan, that's how it was supposed to end. But as he looked into the Oliver's eyes he felt something he hadn't felt in a long, long time…fear. With a guttural yell Oliver launched himself at Deathstroke with all the speed and power his new body could give him. In a blink of an eye he lowered his shoulder and hammered into his enemy and kept on going. He was going to save her and there was only one way he could be sure.

Time seemed to slow down for Felicity. The terror she felt now was more than she had ever felt in her life. She had known, in her head what Oliver was going to do, but the reality of it was almost too much for her heart to bear. But she couldn't stop looking as Oliver crashed into the maniac that had caused so much pain, all in the name of a woman that never loved him. She couldn't stop looking as Oliver pushed Slade to the windows, couldn't stop looking as they both crashed through the windows and out of the building. Felicity thought, at that very moment her heart stopped beating. He was gone from her sight. He was gone.

Quickly recovering she turned to face her pinned hands. She placed her feet against the wall and in a three point position she pushed with her legs and pulled her arms with more strength than she thought possible. She had to see. With a grunt and a crash she freed herself from the wall and landed on the floor. Felicity didn't bother to try and cut the zip cuffs, she just ran to the window where Oliver had left from. She barely slowed as she reached the edge and looked down, her fear of heights completely lost in her all consuming fear for Oliver. What she saw as she looked down made her blood run cold. There they were, they had crashed onto the roof of a car. She could see what had been Slade's face, what was left of it, looking up unblinking into the sun. Oliver had landed on top of him, all she saw was the back of his green Arrow gear. He wasn't moving. 'Not like this" she thought 'it can't end like this!'


	2. Chapter 2 Short Time to Live

Now

The cliche goes that before you die your life passes before your eyes. In Oliver Queen's experience that was lie. He'd been close to death several times and he'd never experienced anything of the sort. No memory flashes, no bright light, just darkness and nothingness. But as he quickly approached terminal velocity, he felt a feeling of near weightless. It was like he wasn't falling anymore, he was floating. And as he "floated" through the air clutching his adversary's black and orange tact gear clad chest and felt the man's death struggles, Oliver's mind pushed past the intense pain as a result of the improved mirakuru and drifted back to more pleasant memories. Due to his own actions he had a short time to live. Best to make the most of it.

He'd been so certain of himself when he returned from the island that first time. Five years in that forge had remade him. He had become a living weapon, honed by the nightmares he had experienced. Nothing he believed could ever be harder than what he had faced on Lian Yu, with his scars both physical and mental bearing silent witness to his trails. As he walked back into his family home for the first time in five years he had known that his cause was just, he had near absolute confidence in his abilities and there was no doubt about his eventually success. He pictured himself as a storm that would push aside anyone or anything that stood in his path. A lone typhoon that would sweep his city clean and avenge his father. His arrogance, his hubris, was so self evident in hindsight. But then again, Oliver mused with some dark amusement in the final moments of his life, self awareness had never been one of his strong suits.

Of course he had been wrong, about almost everything, but the thing that had become clear to him first was how deluded he had been about fulfilling his crusade alone. Dig had been the first he recruited to his cause. He understood Dig. Although to the boy that had left on the Queen's Gambit with his father, John Diggle would have been a complete mystery; the man Oliver had become was very familiar with men like the bodyguard his mother had hired to protect him. The background check he had run on him and his own observations confirmed everything he had initially thought about the man. He remembered how relieved he was when Dig accepted to become his partner in his quest, he would have really hated killing him.

No, Dig he understood. But his next recruit, his next partner, his truest partner, was completely outside his experience. To Oliver's mind he had lived three lives and in none of them had he ever met or gotten to know someone like Felicity Smoak. She was… unique.

—

24 October 2012

He had never liked elevators, even as a kid but after the island he hated them, they reminded him too much of cages. Worse they were confining, any fight in such a small space more than likely would become a scrum. Refusing to think about the unpleasant nature of his current conveyance any longer, he focused on what was really bothering him. He hadn't been home even a month and he was already about to ask for outside help. He was disgusted with himself but he didn't see any other choice. One good look at the laptop he had retrieved and he knew it was beyond his ability to gain any useful information from the computer. It was imperative that he know what was on the hard drive, made worse by the fact that time was a factor, he needed to know now. As much as it pained him he realized he needed some IT expert to look at the laptop he carried with him in his right hand. Luckily for him his family owned a multibillion dollar corporation that employed several. As the elevator finally reached the executive admin floor a small "ding" preceded the doors opening. Oliver quickly readjusted his outward "mask" to the outside world. He hadn't know it at the time but all the years of being a slouch had proved excellent training for his current disguise. Ollie Queen had been a rich spoiled brat and it was almost effortless to convince everyone that five years "dead" hadn't changed him that much.

As he walked out into the entryway to the office of Queen Consolidated's CEO, what had been his father's office, Oliver is stuck once again by a reverse sense of deja vu. He knew he had been here, more times than he could count actually; he'd seen these same green faux stone walls, but somehow it felt like he hadn't. It was a feeling he was becoming, with some some bit of irony, used to in the near month he'd been back. 'Amazing what can become familiar and what can become strange,' he thought.

Oliver made his way to the the executive admin, Janet Fisher's desk. The petite brunette was new, at least to him. His father's old EA, it seemed, had left the company. 'Candice, her name was Candice. Too bad she left. I actually kind of liked her.' He knew the name of the new EA of course and even if he hadn't her name plate clearly spelled it out but "Ollie" would never take the time to really look at something as small as that.

"Hey, Janice is it? I'm here to see the big man. Don't bother announcing me, I'll just show myself in." It bothered him to be so dismissive to someone but he had to be convincing. He could see the surprised look on Janet's face. Guess having the "dead" son of the company's former CEO trying to barge his way into the office of the current one wasn't something that she had ever experienced before. She tried to recover, he could tell but all she got out was "Mr. Queen, you can't…" just before he reached the glass door and made his way into the his father's old office.

He was surprised by what he felt seeing Walter Steele, his "new" step-father, bathed in sunlight sitting behind that desk. A sense of wrongness welled up from his core. No one had sat at that desk but Robert Queen during Oliver's "first" life and seeing someone doing so seemed like an insult to his father's memory. He quickly dismissed such irrational thoughts, everything he had learned about the man sitting in his father's chair proved that he had done more than earn the right. 'Besides', he thought, 'someone has to sit there and better him than me.'

It was clear that he had interrupted Walter and his exasperated expression as he took off his glasses and placed them on the glass desk spoke volumes as Oliver made his way to the him. "Oliver, to what do I owe this unexpected visit?" As always Walter's crisp British accent made him sound smart without trying.

"I need some help actually and I was hoping you can point me in the right direction to get it." He made it seem like he was bored and disinterested, as if "Ollie" the spoiled brat had come all this way for something trivial.

Walter had a wry smile as he replied "and what might that be?" Oh, he was annoyed alright, Oliver could tell.

"Well, see, I kinda messed up my laptop", he motioned with his right hand holding the computer, "and I need someone to take a look at it and see if they can get it going again. I figured it wouldn't be a big problem to come over here and get it taking care of, you know?" Even he cringed inwardly at the childish nature of his ruse request.

"Oliver, you've come all this way so that an employee of Queen Consolidated has to take time out of their work day to fix your laptop, which you 'messed up?'"

Oliver could tell Walter was getting even more annoyed. Not that it mattered of course, it was good that Walter was bothered, all that mattered was that he got the help he needed. It was clear that Walter was having an internal debate, probably between the absurd and childish nature of Oliver's request and wanting to dismiss it as such on the one side and on the other helping the "back from the dead" son on his wife. Luckily the later won out.

"Alright Oliver, just this once I'll indulge you." He quickly picked up a pen and post-it note pad from the right side of his desk and wrote something down. Once he finished he peeled off the note and reached over his desk to hand it over.

"Thanks, and don't worry, this won't become a habit," taking the note from Walter's hand with a small smile. "I promise."

Based on the doubtful look on Walter's face, Oliver knew he didn't put much stock in Oliver's "promise". 'Got what I wanted, best not to push my luck' he thought and with that he looked at the note he'd just been handed.

"Felicity Smoak" he read aloud, "who's Felicity Smoak?" He could see that there was an office number under the name.

"She's the best person we have in the IT Department Oliver. If she can't fix your 'messed up' laptop then no one can." Oliver could tell that Walter wanted to be done with this intrusion and get back to more important matters.

"Why is she in this office, I don't remember IT being in this section." Oliver hoped Walter didn't notice the slip, after his return he had memorized the layout of QC. You could never know when such information might come in handy but "Ollie" would never have taken the time to do something like that.

Thankfully Walter missed the implication of his question "Felicity doesn't work in the main IT Department, she has her own private office. Although that isn't her normal one, it's just a temp while work is being done on her permanent one."

"Okay, thanks. She must be something else to get her own office, huh?"

"She is," came the reply, "and Oliver, please don't do anything stupid with Ms. Smoak. She's a very valued member of the QC team and I'd hate to lose her because you tried something…inappropriate." Walter was clearly having second thoughts about handing Oliver her name.

"Don't worry, it's me." He smiled and turned to leave the office.

Almost whispered under his breath Oliver could hear Walter's response, "that's what I'm afraid of."

—

As Oliver made his way to this Felicity Smoak's office he felt a little bothered by his step-father's response. Of course he shouldn't be, Walter's reaction was just what Oliver was going for but still…it irked him that people thought so little of him. Regardless, it was the mission that came first and for that he needed the help of this IT whiz.

Judging from Walter's reticence, he had expected the IT girl to be young and fairly attractive. As he entered the office it was impossible not to take note of her, the small office's lone occupant. Sitting at her desk she was turned away from him so all he could see was her right side and she seemed engrossed in whatever project she was working on. It's clear she had no idea he had entered the room. Oliver cleared his throat to announce his presence and get her attention. "Felicity Smoak?" he asked.

The IT girl turned to him and he was stuck by what he saw. A puzzled expression covered her face as her eyebrows moved up in surprise. Fair skin, with bright blue eyes almost hidden behind large glasses, long blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail and she had a pen in her mouth which she reached for with her right hand. But the thing that drew his eye immediately were her lips and the bright red lipstick she wore as her hand removed the pen from her opened mouth. Those red lips, she was much more than fairly attractive.

"Hi, I'm Oliver Queen."

The girl with red lips and pink blouse, a nice combination Oliver mused, tried to recover from her surprise visitor. "Of course. I know who you are, you're Mr. Queen." She smiled as she replied.

"No, Mr. Queen was my father." He didn't know if he would ever get used to being called 'Mr. Queen.'

The red lipped IT girl quickly responded. "Right, but he's dead." With a quick shake of her head she realized she had misspoke and tried to recover, "I mean, he drowned."

'Well, no one has said that to me since I returned,' thought Oliver as he stared at the young woman.

"You didn't," she continued, "which means you could come down to the IT Department and listen to me babble." Oliver could tell with nervous energy she tapped her pen on the desk a few times. He couldn't help himself as he raised his right eyebrow at the situation.

"Which will end. In three, two, one." She turned her head to the left, visibly trying to regain some composure before she looked up into his eyes once again.

Bringing up the laptop with his right hand Oliver got to the point. "I'm having some trouble with my computer and they told me that you were the person to come and see." As Oliver held the computer with both hands he felt it wasn't necessary to say that it was the CEO of the company that had given him her name, the young woman was nervous enough as it was. With his left hand he placed the damaged laptop on the right side of the IT girl's desk.

Now for the truly hard part. All the way to the QC building he had tried to come up with some believable explanation as to why "Ollie Queen" would have a laptop damaged in such a particular fashion. The island had taught him many skill sets but making up cover stories was not one of them. In the end he reasoned it didn't matter, no employee of his family's company was going to go to the police with what they saw, no matter how outrageous his story was.

"I was at my coffee shop surfing the web and I spilt a latte on it." It sounded even worse to him when he said it out loud.

"Really?" The incredulous look and tone of Felicity showed him just how "effective" his ruse was.

"Yeah." He really couldn't think of anything else to say.

She gave a quick look at the laptop before looking at him, saying, "Because these look like bullet holes." She had a lyrical voice, he noted.

Externally Oliver responded in a matter of fact tone of voice "my coffee shop is in a bad neighborhood." Internally he winced at his lame sounding excuse, 'if this is the extent of my skill, I might never ask for help again.'

Felicity reacted by immediately tilting her head towards her right shoulder. Her silent disbelieving stare at him said it all.

With a mirthful gaze Oliver couldn't believe how he had lost control over the situation. But more than that he found the whole thing, especially this beautiful IT girl and her reactions so…refreshing. So much so that he actually found himself slightly smiling back at the woman that had clearly seen through his paper thin excuse. He couldn't help himself and that truly surprised him. No one except his family and closest friends had gotten him to really smile since his return and in less than five minutes after meeting this girl she had done the same. 'Remarkable' was all he could think.

—

As Oliver sat in his desk chair in his room in the Queen Mansion and looked across at his laptop, he reflected on the last several days and their events. He had stopped Floyd Lawton, saved his step-father's life and recruited Dig to the mission. But none of it would have been possible if he hadn't gotten his hands on the information from the laptop he recovered. And that had only been possible with the help of Felicity Smoak. In fact it was during his meeting with her that he realized how much he needed help if he wanted his crusade to succeed.

Oliver focused again on the information on his computer screen. It was a quick and dirty background check but it held all the basic information. Her name, Felicity Meghan Smoak, her birthday…he skimmed once more the details of her life. He didn't care much for the early years although it hadn't surprised him to learn that she had been salutatorian of her high school. What had been surprising was that she had been junior co-captain of her senior year tennis team, not that her school was known for it's tennis program he noted again with slight amusement.

Accepted to MIT on a full ride scholarship she had excelled. By her senior year she had been actively recruited by over a dozen of the largest tech corporations in the country. Graduating third in her class over all she finally accepted the offer from QC. With a little help from the stolen password of the CEO it had been easy to track her career at the company. Joining the Computer Sciences Department her rise over the next two years was nothing short of meteoric. All of her supervisors and peer reviews painted the same story: smart, dedicated, and hard working.

It seemed certain that she had a near limitless future with the company. But all that had changed 7 months before Oliver had returned from the island. Without explanation she had put in for an immediate transfer to the IT Department, she had even volunteered to take a cut in pay to make it happen. Her only other requests were that she be given a private office and be left alone to work.

To say her supervisors had been shocked was an understatement, they couldn't understand why a woman with such a bright future would seemingly throw it all away. They had tried to convince her to change her mind but Felicity replied that if her requests were not met she would have no choice but to tender her resignation. It was at this point that Walter got involved and he had been the one that okayed her transfer, office and work requests. Clearly she had been noticed.

Why Felicity had done such a thing was still a mystery to him. His surveillance of her of over the past few days had yielded no clues. She seemed exactly as she first appeared, a bright, honest and hard working woman with little or nothing to hide. He had followed her to her house and even knew when and where she liked to park her car in the QC garage when she came to work in the morning. He told himself, even now sitting and looking at his computer, that everything he had done was motivated by his mission and ascertaining if she could be trusted with other situations in the future like the laptop. Her red lips had nothing to do with his…thorough review. As he closed his laptop he refocused himself and thought, 'it's not like I'm ever going to recruit her.'

—

Now

'What a fool and in so many ways,' he thought. He'd made so many mistakes, with Thea, his mother, Laurel, Sara, Roy, Tommy, with…Felicity. In his heart he had only wanted the best for each and everyone of them but almost nothing had worked out the way he had hoped. His pride, his hubris again he thought. Enough regrets for all three of his "lifetimes."

But it was her, Felicity, that he focused on. This had been the reason he had pushed her away after Russia, why he hadn't given in to his potential feelings for her until the end. Because he knew this was going to be his end. He didn't know when or how, but he knew that one day he'd face someone that was just better than him and he would die. He had accepted that fact, especially after he returned from the island the second time. How could he try a relationship with her when he knew this was the best case scenario?

Oliver knew she hadn't understood and it was one of the hardest things he had ever done and even harder to follow through with it. Not that it had mattered, with everything that had happened in the end he had to tell her how he felt. He had to let her know. He hadn't been strong enough to stop himself. Once again he had let his weakness rule him.

Still, he hoped that she wouldn't hate him after this. It was an easy trap to fall into, easier to hate the person you lost, blame them rather than truly mourning them. Oliver had almost done it himself with his father. He was sad that he had offered her so little in comparison to how much she had given him. Her financial future was secure, Oliver had made sure of that, but it was such a poor offering to what he'd received. He hoped that she would have a long and happy life. That she would be loved and respected the way she deserved. Nothing was too good for her.

Pleasant memories…for the last time he called forth Felicity's image in his mind's eye and fixed it in place. Azure eyes like pieces of the sky, skin as fair and soft as the clouds, and golden flowing hair like rays of the sun. He couldn't help but smile.

—

Oliver Queen and Slade Wilson crashed onto the roof of a parked grey Mercedes W222 S-Class sedan going 127 miles per hour. The kinetic energy and force from the impact crushed the roof and caused the glass from the windows and windshields to explode outwards in all directions onto the street near the QC building. The impact wave rushed out and triggered the alarms of several nearby cars. The blaring horns filled the near empty early morning streets. Blood began to flow from the shattered still bodies of both men and spilled onto the pavement, creating thick red pools.

No normal human could have survived.


End file.
